India's Language Story - Looking For the Missing Links | Dr. Peggy Mohan

In the first episode of the Documentary Series, Argumentative Indians explore

"India's Language Story- Looking for the Missing Links"

 As a union of not just states, but of several linguistically diverse peoples, it is unsurprising that disputes over languages have a long history in India. Mass protests and brutal riots were witnessed during the decades after the independence as states were slowly reorganised on linguistic lines. While some languages initially overlooked by the constitution won their battle for official recognition, others gave up and perished, and some still continue to fight. 

 

BJP, the Hindu-nationalist party, currently in power at the centre, is accused of pushing for Hindi-imperialism. However, the debate over national language predates them by over a century. Many of India’s leading independence leaders including Mahatma Gandhi were in favour of linguistic unification and ending the dominance of English, the language of the colonisers. 

The unified language Mahatma Gandhi had endorsed was not Hindi, but Hindustani, the language of Indian nationalism and freedom struggle. He believed it would be a more secular choice, fusing Urdu and Hindi into one. Secular it may have been, but it surely wasn’t inclusive of vast swathes of Indians in the South and the East. And now the case for Hindustani is all but dead, with many Indians coming to see Urdu as a non-Indian language. 

On the other hand, English has gone from success to success. While understood by a tiny portion of the urban elite at the time of the independence and limited to official use only, in the past 75 years English has penetrated into almost all spheres of Indian life, and percolated down to its remote towns and villages. 

After seeing its economic value, most Indians are now loath to give up English, but a small faction still hopes for a national “Link Language” of Indian origin. But any discussion on it rapidly descends into repugnant language chauvinism. “Tamil is the oldest language.” “Bengali is the sweetest language.” “Those who don’t know Hindi cannot be Indians”… and more such trite statements are commonly thrown around. 

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